The BAU floor is almost completely empty.

Most of the team has gone home hours ago, leaving the bullpen quiet except for the low hum of computers and the occasional distant noise from another floor of the building. The lights are dimmed to the evening setting, casting long shadows across the desks.

I’m finishing a report when I hear it.

Footsteps.

Small ones.

Not the steady stride of an agent.

I pause and listen.

There it is again—soft squeaks against the floor.

Children are not typically present inside federal buildings at this hour, which means my brain immediately begins running through several possible explanations.

None of them are particularly comforting.

I stand and step out from behind my desk.

A moment later the source of the noise appears at the end of the hallway.

A little boy.

He walks into the bullpen slowly, looking around the room with open curiosity like he’s wandered into a museum exhibit rather than the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.

He can’t be older than five.

Several questions occur simultaneously.

How did he get in here?

Where are his parents?

And why is he alone?

“Hey—whoa,” I say, stepping forward.

The boy stops immediately and looks up at me.

He doesn’t seem scared.

Just curious.

For a moment we simply look at each other.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” I reply carefully.

“What’s your name?”

“Sebastian.”

That answers exactly one question.

“Hi, Sebastian.”

He glances around the bullpen again, taking in the desks, the chairs, the walls of case boards.

“This place is big.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Yes it is.”

I crouch slightly so we’re closer to eye level.

“Sebastian, where are your parents?”

He thinks about that for a second.

“My mom was talking.”

“With someone?”

He nods.

Then he wanders a few steps farther into the bullpen like the conversation is already finished.

Alarm bells are now ringing much louder in my head.

A young child wandering unsupervised inside a federal building raises several immediate safety concerns.

“Sebastian,” I say gently, “do you know where your mom is now?”

He shrugs.

“Somewhere.”

That is not particularly helpful.

He stops beside my desk and peers curiously at the stack of files sitting there.

“That’s a lot of papers.”

“Yes.”

“You must work a lot.”

“That’s accurate.”

Before I can continue the conversation, I hear quick footsteps approaching from the hallway.

Faster this time.

Urgent.

I turn.

A woman appears at the entrance to the bullpen, scanning the room immediately like she’s searching for something—or someone.

Her eyes move quickly across the desks.

Then she sees the boy.

Relief crosses her expression almost instantly.

Sebastian notices her at the same moment.

“Oh!”

He points toward her.

“That’s my mommy.”

I straighten slowly.

The situation rearranges itself in my mind almost immediately.

Sebastian had said mommy, which means the woman walking toward us is not just another agent working late hours. She is the person responsible for the small human currently standing beside my desk.

Concern replaced with understanding.

Sebastian runs a few steps toward her before stopping and turning back to point at me.

“He found me.”

I adjust my glasses slightly.

“Yes,” I say.

“Yes I did.

And just like that, the quiet BAU bullpen contains something it almost never does.

A small child.

A mother who clearly just spent several minutes searching for him.

And me—standing in the middle of it, realizing that the most unexpected part of my evening wasn’t finishing paperwork. It was meeting Sebastian, and apparently his mother.

I glance back toward him briefly, then toward her again.

A small part of me realizes I want to understand the variables involved here.

Who she is.

Why a child is comfortable wandering the FBI.

And how someone can look both entirely composed and slightly out of breath at the same time.

Before I overthink it any further, I adjust my posture slightly.

“Um—hi.”

I gesture lightly toward Sebastian.

“I believe this might belong to you.”